I wrote earlier this summer about how Christian Nationalists were trying to take over the town of Battle Ground, Washington—just north of Portland, Oregon. Basically, the wealthy right-wing business owners of Maddox, an electrical equipment company, were buying up properties all over the place, claiming they were doing so to help revitalize the area. But in doing so, they were effectively making it impossible for anyone to stand in their way if they disagreed with how the owners were reimagining the city. Hell, they took over the local newspaper, too.

Those owners, including Maddox CEO Camden Spiller, are connected to Christian Nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, which makes all of this even more concerning.

One Maddox manager was elected mayor. The deputy mayor was married to another Maddox employee. Another person tied to the company was on the public school board. And another manager, who co-hosted a podcast with a prominent local pastor, said their show was “an experiment in Christian localism,” talking about how they wanted to control as much as they could in Battle Ground. (Reporter Erik Neumann of Oregon Public Broadcasting has done extensive reporting on all of this.)

Back in May, the city council considered adding religious invocations to the starts of their meetings. In August, it became a reality. As writer Brian Kaylor notes, at the meeting when they considered a formal resolution, one pastor even said during the public comments that an “invocation prayer at the beginning of each council meeting will be a blessing. I know because the Bible tells us so.”

So the city passed a resolution allowing invocations prayers—it was a 5-1 vote—and said speakers would be chosen on a “rotating, first-come, first-served basis.” Speakers would only be allowed to give those invocations once a year and anyone who wanted a slot could schedule it by calling the City Manager or filling out an online form. The only rules were that the invocations had to be under three minutes, the message had to be “positive and uplifting,” and speakers could not “denigrate any other faiths or beliefs, including nonbelievers, threaten damnation, proselytize, or preach conversion.”

If the goal was to avoid any lawsuits, they seemed to check all the boxes. I have to assume they thought only Christians would sign up to do the honors.

Instead, the first person to sign up was a Satanist.